There is something extraterrestrial going on in Canberra. Clive Palmer has come from a galaxy far, far away, captured the parliament and hijacked debate about climate change. He is patently not green, though he has managed to convince many that he is. Using some kind of Jedi mind trick, he has encouraged politicians to pass a law that will hand billions of dollars back to the biggest polluters so they can give it to consumers, who will then be able to afford to keep heaters burning longer and leave more lights on.

Christine Milne, while widely recognised as green, also has policies that appear to have come from another planet. Her logic for keeping petrol prices low rests on a protest against extra fuel tax dollars being spent on roads. Did she rail against the proceeds of the carbon tax being used to compensate households or lift tax free thresholds (which probably helped many people buy new cars)?

Labor’s Mark Butler wants to be cast as Yoda but it’s hard to see the wisdom in a scheme, already discredited in Europe, that puts an arbitrary cap on emissions then ‘‘lets business work out the cheapest and most effective way’’ to bring down carbon pollution.

If Labor’s Jedi Council had had their way, Australia would next year be part of the European Emissions Trading Scheme. EU businesses received a massive over-allocation of free permits to protect them from financial harm. As a result of this generous subsidy program, there was no incentive to change behaviour, and emissions rose initially then fell on account of the financial crisis. Slower economic activity, including a fall in demand for energy intensive manufactured products and travel, kept emissions down around the world. Lower emissions added even more excess permits to those already sloshing around the system and now a surplus of around one billion of them means polluters have no obligation to take action.

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In the EU ETS, the price of carbon has been less than €10 and as low as €2.75 for almost 10 years. At those prices, it’s cheaper to buy CO2 certificates than make investments in new technology and clean energy sources. Experts agree that the price needs to be $30 or more to spur such investment. Still, the Labor Green alliance would have linked Australia to the EU’s scheme, which was recently described by The Economist magazine as ‘‘worse than useless’’ and by the International Emissions Trading Association as an example of ‘‘what not to do’’.

It’s too early to know how emission trading schemes in the United States, China and South Korea will fare, but the science seems to suggest we haven’t got a lot of time to lose waiting. Luckily, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency appear to have escaped the madness on Capital Hill.

The real Jedi Masters, outside politics, are investing in wind, hydro, geothermal power and solar as the most reliable instruments to help fight global warming and meet our international emission reduction obligations. Germany is the world’s leader in this area and is already generating a third of its energy needs with renewables (although carbon emissions in Germany are on the rise as they replace nuclear power with dirty coal) .

The Renewable Energy Target is being reviewed and likely to be kept at a true 20 per cent by 2020. If Environment Minister Greg Hunt’s Direct Action plan goes ahead, $2.55 billion will be available through the carbon farming initiative that awards those on the land for efforts in revegetation and reforestation. Under the scheme, Australia’s 120 or so biggest polluters will also have their emissions capped and be required to buy carbon credits in order to remain under the limit. The Climate Change Authority has recommended the cheapest way to do that is to look at eligible projects overseas.

The Business Council of Australia and the Australian Industry Group prefer projects that increase energy efficiency at local mines or in the domestic transport sector. Some still believe that technology that captures and stores emissions deep underground is a worthwhile investment. Carbon capture and storage was supposed to help keep the climate clean while also preserving profits for the world’s big miners.

Kevin Rudd put $300 million in to setting up the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute, which has ploughed much of that seed money into overseas projects that have so far failed to prove that you can vanish emissions at existing facilities or at new ones.

Vattenfall is one of Europe’s biggest mining and power station conglomerates. In 2006 at the Schwarze Pumpe power station in Spremberg, east Germany, the world’s first full-scale CCS demonstration site was built. Eight weeks ago, it was quietly decommissioned after failing to achieve regulatory support to store emissions. Officials in Berlin saw buried CO2 almost as dangerous as nuclear waste. No state government in Germany will now even consider the idea of pipelines carrying CO2 across their land.

After ten years of investment, the Swiss giant Vattenfall announced that it was abandoning all research in to carbon capture and storage. It had proven too costly, and the high amounts of energy required to capture the emissions made the endeavour pointless. With that in mind, perhaps the European Union’s climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard was possessed by some alien force this week when she awarded €300m ($435m) for a carbon capture and storage project in the UK. Drax is the UK’s largest power station and currently produces 7 per cent of the nation’s electricity. The company will use the funds to build a coal-fired plant next to its existing power station in Selby, North Yorkshire, which is the largest single source of CO2 emissions in Britain. The new plant would be capable of powering 630,000 British homes, with some 1.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions from the facility being captured and pumped annually into a depleted gas field in the North Sea.

The European Commission is confident that the new plant’s emissions will reduce greenhouse gases by an amount equivalent to taking more than one million cars off the road. Let’s hope the force is with them. History is not. As well as the investment in Yorkshire, Commissioner Hedegaard has earmarked €1 billion for 19 other clean energy projects across Europe, including a facility that will generate electricity from wave and tidal movements off the west coast of Ireland, a solar project in Cyprus and a geothermal power plant in Malta.

Greg Hunt supports a renewable energy target but doesn’t think governments should be investing in ‘‘speculative’’ renewable energy projects. He’s much more comfortable with safer bets, like trees. Perhaps Clive Palmer can change his mind. Help him Obi-Wan Kenobi - you’re his only hope.

Emma Alberici presents Lateline on ABC1.

Annabel Crabb is on leave.

1 comment

Those who have publicly pronounced or encouraged climate change denial within Australia shame us as a nation. I cannot believe there are people out there rejoicing at the end of national action to address climate change, in the form of the climate tax. Do such people not understand science, care about our environment and the world their children grow old in, and the future economy of Australia? Greg Hunt as Environment Minister is simply a bad joke.